Tag Archives: Annie Martell

In January of 1984, 13 years before the airplane he was piloting solo crashed off the coast of California, John Denver called flying “one of my favorite things.”

“She’s meant an awful lot to me in my life – and still means something to me,” John says of ex-wife Annie.

It’s a sad, eerie moment during a never-before- aired interview conduct- ed by BlogTalkRadio host Bob “Mr. Media” Andelman – then a writer for The St. Peters- burg Times – just prior to Super Bowl XVIII in Tampa, at which the beloved singer would perform.

Today, Jan. 21, at 1 p.m. ET, as the first installment of his “Lost Tapes” series, Bob will unspool the 40-minute interview in its entirety on Mr. Media Interviews.

John’s sentiments about flying arose when asked by Bob, “When you’re not working [or] entertaining, what do you like to do to relax?”

“I enjoy flying a lot. That’s one of my favorite things,” says John, who was 53 when his Long-EZ aircraft went down shortly after taking off from the Monterey Peninsula Airport on Oct. 12, 1997.

In the cockpit of his Learjet.

“I have over 2,000 hours and pilot-in-command of a Learjet. I fly my own plane. I have an open-cockpit biplane. It does acrobatics and stuff.”

Among other topics, John also discusses his friendship with Frank Sinatra, working with George Burns on the 1977 comedy Oh, God!, and his relationship with his first wife, Annie Martell, the subject of his 1974 hit, Annie’s Song.

Of Annie, whom he had divorced two years earlier, John says:

“I love Annie. She’s a wonderful woman. . . Our relationship is on excellent footing. We had a family Christmas Eve, and it was as warm and wonderful as you could possibly imagine.”

He also credits her with being part of one of the greatest moments in his life:

John (left) backstage at his January 1984 concert in St. Petersburg, Fla. In the foreground is a much younger – and hairier – Bob Andelman.

“When Annie and I adopted Zachary, our son, the day that we went to pick him up from the adoption agency, in [Annie’s hometown of] Minneapolis, Minnesota, we were driving there, and they played Annie’s Song on the radio. And it was the number-one song in the country.

“Hearing that song on the way to pick up our first child, and having it be this love song that I’d written for her and having it be the most popular song in the country. . . that’s pretty hard to top.”